“This is Lawrence, Kansas….Is Anybody There?”

For those of you interested in some vintage footage of Lawrence and Kansas City, as well as a reminder when we all lived in fear of complete destruction, rather than “terrorist attacks”, the Sci-Fi Channel is showing the 1983 TV-movie The Day After, tonight.

15 Replies to ““This is Lawrence, Kansas….Is Anybody There?””

  1. I’m in that movie. Or at least I’m one of a shit ton of people in the scene in Allen Field House and the crowd outside the hospital. It was one of the only two times I stepped into the Field House the entire time I was at KU.

    Interestingly, the farmhouse they used belonged to the aunt of a very good friend of mine. What they got for it was a shitton of money and their house completely remodeled…

    D.

  2. Actually, I suspect that the fear factor of seeing locations that you see everyday being obliterated (as is the case with The Day After, for most of the folks on my friends list) would actually top out as a bit higher.

    That’s one of the things I’ve tried to explain to people about 9/11, too, come to think of it.

  3. There is that

    Though I was thinking of how Threads was supposed to be more graphic, along with the long term effects of nuclear warfare about a decade or two later.

  4. is in the movie as well. He’s the “man with radio” at the supermarket checkout when the reussians hit one of the aircraft carriers in the gulf (or wherever).

  5. When the movie The Bone Collector came out, one of the victims was found a block from where I worked, in a place I walked past every day. It was completely deserted on weekends. This was so freaky that I found a new route to work…

  6. I remember wanting to be in it and my parents saying no. Then, a girl in my 4th grade class came to show and tell with a picture of her and her family done up for the movie. I acutely recall how jealous I was…

    And speaking of movies made in Lawrence…
    While watching the Oscars, I kept thinking of all the rumors about Matt Dillon that went around during the filming of Kansas

    I used to rent Nice Girls Don’t Explode all the time in Jr. high because the boy I had a crush on in 8th grade was one of the skater boys in the movie…I am pretty sure that the same two boys from that movie (who were in my grade) were in the “Just One Fix” video (wasn’t that by Ministry?) in the early 90s. I was over the crush by then.

    I’ll shut up now.

  7. I’m in Kansas. Or at least, I was an extra for a day on the set. I’ve never actually watched the movie to find out if my scene made the cut. I spent half the day sitting in my car in a cornfield, ate lunch at the catering tent, filmed the scene, and got something like $50 bucks for my trouble. It was fun.

  8. I remember being quite envious of my friends that summer. I was in Canada with my family when they made it, so when I came home, all of them were talking about being in the Field House scene and how much fun getting covered in bandages and radiation make-up had been.

  9. Me, I got glycerin and dust in the hair and a torn up bloody breast. I think I still have the shirt that wardrobe gave me to wear, actually.

    D.

  10. I was watching this a few years ago with my daughter trying to explain to her why this was even feasible, possible, or remotely scarey. To here Russians are gangsters with money. She just didn’t get it.

    Now when I think about I have troubles remembering it too.

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